After starter Rob Walker was injured early, Donahue made the point again by telling Barnes that he would remain fifth string because the scholarship guys needed their chances.
"Riding that bike home every night, brakes broken, stopping it with my feet, I would still envision what it would be like if I played," Barnes said. "What decisions I would make. How I could lead us."
He practiced his drop-back moves under a streetlight near his apartment. He sat outside the coaches' office so they would see him studying the plays.
He moved the scout team in practice against the first-team defense, even changing his cadence to draw them offside.
Everyone finally noticed. The Bruins had lost their first two conference games, so why not? After he'd given a stirring Friday night speech before a game against Washington State, Barnes was given a start.
And now the hard part began.
He threw an interception early in that game, and was benched for what he thought would be forever.
"He walked back to sit next to me on the bus, and you could tell he had been crying, his career was over," Smith said.
Then, when he was given another chance, he realized that, with his learning disability, he would need help figuring out the complicated offense.
So he confided in Neuheisel, who calmly told him it was no big deal, that he would help him as long as it didn't mean circumventing the other coaches.
"Sure, I acted calm. I didn't want John to see me running into a room shouting, 'Oh no, we're dead!' " Neuheisel said. "But it was very, very unusual."
Together, they worked on helping Barnes remember the offense.
And when Barnes couldn't, Neuheisel stood on the sidelines, contorting his body like a Y or a Z to remind Barnes of his primary receivers.
"It was crazy, like somebody doing the 'YMCA' dance over there,' " Barnes said. "But it worked."
Then came The Game, when Neuheisel simplified the Bruin signs so that all Barnes had to do was nod at J.J. Stokes, and the receiver would run downfield for a bomb.
"But I didn't think he would do it on third down on our 10-yard line!" said Neuheisel, the Washington coach who is still close to Barnes today. "I about died."
The throw was perfect, the run was dazzling, the touchdown was scored with 2:04 remaining as the Bruins took a lead over USC that they never lost.
It was a moment Barnes never repeated.
A couple of weeks later, he was given a scholarship, and it allowed him to finish school, but the glory died.
He played football in Italy one year, enjoying sights such as offensive linemen smoking on the sidelines, experiencing adventures such as calling the wrong plays in Italian.
Then he turned to a life of selling, which is what he had been doing for years anyway.
"All this taught me that you never give up, that good things will happen if you hang in there long enough," he said, an example of all that is possible with college athletics. "Believe me, I got as much out of that game as UCLA did."
Oh, plus a little acting job in an acclaimed movie.
Barnes played the Alabama quarterback who handed the ball to Tom Hanks' character.
"The 1992 game was something I'll never forget, and the movie was perfect," Neuheisel said. "John Barnes was UCLA's Forrest Gump."
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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.
